yeah, i don't wall them off but i don't hold back on scolding them on their credulity, either.

to me, all doctrines are red flags for cultish manipulation. none of them are entirely free of it. even the least prescriptive ones like variants of zen and taoism are polluted with dumb ideas, missing the point of the original texts.

actually, the Tao Te Ching was a truly amazing revelation for me. i felt like i was reading the best version of the laws of the universe i had ever seen. the book first landed in my lap by chance (though i'd read The Tao of Pooh years before, not the classic itself) as a book that junkie friends had swiped to resell, but nobody wanted. kinda portentious, i guess. that was 1999, NYE, in fact, literally it was the first day of the new millennium i it landed on me. it was beside the bed of a girl i had a one-night stand with in a drunken NYE party. i asked if i could take the book and she explained how it arrived there, and said to take it.